Mike Pence Not a Single New Idea

I Want Ed Charbonneau to Have to Bargain With Me

My Indiana State Senator, Ed Charbonneau wants a law passed to prevent teacher unions from being able to bargain for work rules or conditions.  Maybe he would like to author/sponsor a law that would require himself, as a public servant, to meet the same standards as those that he wishes to impose on our teachers.

Maybe he will consider authoring a law that would require him to collectively bargain with the public for his wages, health care premiums, pension benefits, office space, furnishings, supplies, staff, utilities, phones, travel and above all, certify his election annually?

Indiana Senator Mike Delph's Bigotry

Indiana Senator Mike Delph, a Republican from the Carmel area has proposed that Indiana become like Arizona in dealing with "illegal immigration".

In an interview not long ago he said that he's "concerned about the exploitation of cheap labor for profit and the exploitation of human beings that's going on today in the state of Indiana."

I think if Senator Delph was truly concerned about the exploitation of human beings that's going on in the state of Indiana, he would be introducing legislation that would make it illegal for companies to permanently replace workers if they are locked out or find it necessary to strike a company.

To me, Senator Delph's proposed legislation is nothing more than his way of expressing his bigotry.

More ideas for Rejirklicans tax cuts for the rich

Conservatives and the Party of Death

Do we have pitiful priorities?

According to the National Priorities Project, the war in Iraq since 2001 has cost us about 684 billion dollars or an average of a little over 7 billion dollars per month and 5,000 U.S. deaths.

This mornings paper indicates that the Congressional Budget Office in an analysis released Thursday put the net cost of the congressional proposal for universal health care at 597 billion dollars over 10 years which would be about 5 billion dollars per month.

7 billion dollars per month to invade and occupy a country for eight years plus 5,000 dead.

Versus

5 billion dollars per month to reform our failed and cruel health care system for the people of the United States for 10 years and saving countless lives.

You be the judge.

The ReRushlican Whiners

Whaaaaa......Whaaaaaa

That was the sound coming from the right wing ReRushlicans in the U.S. House of Representatives as they cried and whined as the Democrats passed the Economic Recovery bill.

That's after each and every ReRushlican voted no. Their ReRushlican party leader, Rush Limbaugh, wouldn't let even one of them do the right thing. Afterall, a ReRushlican, as you well know, would never vote for anything unless it would cause human pain, misery, suffering or death.

Then, today, President Barack Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Pay Equity Bill which will make it easier for employees to sue for wage discrimination, a measure he said is an important step toward "fundamental fairness" for U.S. workers. That made befuddled ReRushlicans cry even more knowing that now, women will get equal pay for equal work.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) also passed without help from the ReRushlicans. How could they ever be expected to vote for a bill that provides medical insurance to children of low income families. The reason they gave was that the bill included pregnant women. That really blew my mind because they always claim they're "right to life" people. In this case it was, "the hell with the unborn". Go figure.

Wow..what a difference a Congress and President make
when we elect people who can think.

Fair Pay for Women

The right wing in congress, still determined to undermine the American people, continue to be obstructionist. They haven't learned their lesson yet.

Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 providing equal pay for women.

Left wingers said, "Yes we can"

Thanks Senator Bayh for voting the right way.
Thanks Congressman Donnelly for voting the right way.

Right wingers said, "No we won't"

Shame on you, Senator Lugar.

Conservative VS. Liberal

The House of Representatives is debating whether to expand the SCHIP program which would provide medical insurance to an additional four million children. The bill would make legal immigrant children also eligible instead of making them wait five years to be eligible as is now the case.

This legislation passed both the US House and Senate twice before but it was vetoed by Bush. President Elect, Barack Obama would sign the legislation.

Now if the bill does not pass, it will cause human pain, misery, suffering and possibly death for many children. As an excercise in understanding the difference between conservatives and liberals, I invite you to take a guess as to how conservatives will vote on this legislation.

Thanks God - for Liberals

Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives passed two pieces of legislation designed to correct injustices for working women.

Remember Lilly Ledbetter? She was the lady who worked for Goodyear who was cheated by the company by being paid less than all the men who did the same job as she.

When she found out that the company had cheated her, she tried to get what was coming to her. The lousy company refused. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court.

Being comprised of mostly right-wing conservatives who only vote for those things that cause human pain, misery, suffering or death, the Supreme Court ruled against her saying she didn’t file her complaint within six months of her finding out she had been cheated by her bosses. This of course, has allowed other right wing conservative CEO’s to continue doing the same thing to other working women.

Well here’s the good news:

The first bill passed was the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Act. This would overturn the Supreme Court’s hate filled decision.

The second bill passed was the Paycheck Fairness Act which should put stiffer penalties into broken laws by the worker hating companies.

Many thanks to Indiana’s liberal Congressmen Andre Carson, Joe Donnelly, Pete Visclosky, Brad Ellsworth and Baron Hill for knowing right from wrong and voting for workers on both of these bills.

Here’s the bad news:

Right wing conservative worker haters Mike Pence, Mark Souder, Steve Buyer and Dan Burton voted against workers. These are the four Indiana Congressmen who don’t deserve to be re-elected and instead need to be booted out.

Although the country has indicated that we want change in Washington, these two votes are an indication that the job of taking back our country hasn’t been completed. We’ve got more to do.

The right winger conservatives in the U.S. Senate will probably vote against workers and try to defeat these two bills. This indicates to me that the Employee Free Choice Act, which would help workers organize unions is in for a rough time from those who hate workers in our country. One reason for this is the fact that when workers have a union, employers wouldn't dare try to pay women less than men for doing the same job.

Fortunately we now have a good, smart, liberal, worker friendly president-elect, Barack Obama who is on the side of workers.

Toyota Republicans should cut their own pay

By Leo W. Gerard
USW International President
Dec 21, 2008

President Bush took to the TV Friday to announce that he wouldn’t walk past the financial crash of America’s Big Three automakers and do nothing to save their lives.
Refusing resuscitation, Bush said, would be irresponsible during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
A week earlier, 31 GOP Senators, mostly from Southern states, voted to avert their eyes and allow American auto companies to die. They opposed $14 billion in federal loans for GM and Chrysler, revealing that their loyalty lies not with America, not even with their own states, but with South Korea and Germany and Japan.
They are Toyota Republicans.
Toyota has non-union manufacturing plants in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas – states whose senators led the GOP quest to slay the Big Three American auto manufacturers – Richard Shelby, R-Ala.; Mitch McConnell, R-Ky, and John Cornyn, R-Tx. Here’s the Republican from Mississippi, Sen. Thad Cochran, explaining why he’d vote against the loans, “Things have changed. It’s not just the Big Three anymore,” he said, pointing out that Nissan and Toyota employ more Mississippians than General Motors, Ford and Chrysler. But, he said, the foreign companies would not share “in the benefits of that automobile bailout program.”
No. But Mississippi did give Nissan and Toyota more than $650 million to entice them to locate in the state. GM, Ford and Chrysler didn’t share in those benefits, Sen. Cochran.
The Toyota Republicans are all for helping the rich with tax breaks and shelters, and they’re all for aiding foreign auto manufacturers with billions worth of tax forgiveness and government-paid infrastructure improvements.
But their disdain for the working class couldn’t be clearer as they organized defeat of loans to the Big Three under this command: “Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor.”
They haven’t gotten the message sent out by the electorate in November. Voters rejected politicians prolonging the same old policy of protecting themselves and the rich. The nation’s voters want selfless leaders who will perform in the best interests of the entire country. They want change.
Clearly the allegiance of the 31 Republicans who opposed the loan to save GM and Chrysler is not with the United States of America, which would lose 900,000 jobs if just GM closed, and more than 2.1 million if the Big Three did. Those job losses would occur during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. In November, the 11th consecutive month of job losses, another 533,000 people were thrown out of work, swelling the pool of unemployed to 10.3 million. The Toyota Republicans were willing to increase that.
They voted against the interests of their own states as well. Consider what would happen in a few of those Southern States whose senators led the charge against preserving the Big Three. If just GM collapsed, Kentucky would lose 20,000 jobs; Alabama, 21,000; Georgia, 23,000, and Tennessee, 29,400, according to calculations by the Economic Policy Institute.
Sen. Cochran just didn’t think it was right for the U.S. government to aid its auto industry. But apparently he’s fine with foreign governments providing subsidies to the transplant automakers in his state. And, apparently, he’s okay with spending state and federal money to help foreign automakers locate manufacturing plants in the U.S.
Korean and Japanese automakers – including Nissan and Toyota with plants in Cochran’s Mississippi – benefit from manipulation of currencies by their governments, a factor that, according to EPI estimates, reduces their costs by between 10 and 20 percent. In addition, nationalized health care in countries such as Japan and Germany serves as a subsidy.
Also, the Toyota Republican opposed federal money for American companies but supported state and federal money for foreign auto makers estimated at $3.6 billion.
Shelby, for example, got $3 million in federal funds to improve roads near the Hyundai plant in Alabama after the state gave $250 million to the Korean automaker.
Shelby opposed loaning one federal cent to the U.S. automakers, though, telling “Face the Nation” that they should die: “Companies fail every day and others take their place. . . There’s not a bank in this country that would loan a dollar to these companies.”
But for foreign auto companies, his home state of Alabama couldn’t provide enough taxpayer cash – more than three quarters of a billion. In addition to the quarter billion it gave the Korean automaker, it handed another quarter billion to German Daimler for a Mercedes-Benz plant, nearly a quarter billion to Japanese Honda and $29 million to Japanese Toyota.
Similarly, Jim DeMint, another senator who led the Toyota Repubicans’ rebellion against the loans to GM and Chrysler, told the “National Review” recently, “Government should not be in the auto industry.” Yet, his state, South Carolina, got into the auto industry with nearly a quarter billion — $230 million – in gifts to a German auto company – BMW.
The same is true in Kentucky, home of Sen. Mitch McConnell, who said of loans for the Big Three, “Government help is not the only option. It’s not even the best option.” But government help was fine when Kentucky was providing grants for Toyota, which got $371 million from taxpayers since 1986.
It’s clear that the real problem was not a philosophical one. All of these lawmakers were willing to flick free market capitalism out the car window like a cigarette butt if their states could use taxpayer dollars to buy a foreign auto plant. No, what really gags them about the Big Three is that they pay good, middle class wages and benefits as a result of contracts with the United Autoworkers.
Repeatedly, the Toyota Republicans insisted that UAW members bear the brunt of the cost of the bailout. The senators insisted that UAW wages be lowered to match those of non-union auto workers at foreign-owned manufacturers. Toyota Republican Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee, wrote an amendment to the bailout bill that would have required UAW members to accept pay cuts by a specific date in 2009. When Republicans defeated the bailout, DeMint blamed that on the union, saying, “It sounds like the UAW blew up the deal.”
The Toyota Republicans then conferred the American auto industry to bankruptcy. They said they favored bankruptcy because it would enable the Big Three to break pledges made in labor contracts and promises for health care and pensions made to retirees. The Toyota Republicans want the wages of American workers pulled down. To them, UAW members making an average of $28 an hour, accounting for less than 10 percent of the cost of a car, are earning just too much money.
The Toyota Republicans did not, however, make that claim about the white collar workers on Wall Street who got this country into the financial fiasco that led to the dire circumstances for automakers. And not just for American ones. Domestic car sales declined by 40 percent last month, but Asian producers’ sales dropped too – by 35 percent.
The average salary of white collar, Wall Street employees — workers in “securities, commodity contracts and investments” — is four times that of those laboring in the rest of the economy. Remember, these are the guys who are so smart that they took down Bear Stearns, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Washington Mutual, AIG and Lehman Brothers – in less than a year – and ultimately required $700 billion from taxpayers to bail them out.
The top executives of Wall Street banks receive billions of dollars in year-end bonuses. The New York Times detailed those at Merrill Lynch in a story Dec. 17 entitled “On Wall Street, Bonuses, Not Profits Were Real.” In 2006, the firm gave its top executives between $5 billion and $6 billion in bonuses, which means, for example, a trader earning $180,000 a year got a $5 million bonus.
Merrill’s $7.6 billion earnings that year turned out to be bogus. The company’s losses now have exceeded all of the profits it earned over the previous 20 years. To prevent collapse, it sold itself to Bank of America in September. But then, Bank of America took $15 billion of that $700 billion in bailout money. Despite the gift of taxpayer dollars, the CEO of Bank of American has not publicly announced that he will decline a bonus, and Bank of America plans to tell Merrill Lynch workers the amounts of their bonuses beginning Friday, the New York Times reported Thursday.
When those Toyota Republicans voted in favor of providing $700 billion for Wall Street — including both of Tennessee’s senators, Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander; Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell; Georgia’s Saxby Chambliss and Johnny Isakson; South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, and Texas’ Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn – none asked for high-paid white collar workers to take pay cuts or give up their million dollar bonuses. There was a feeble attempt to limit the pay of chief executives, but that applied only to firms that received federal money under one particular method, and the treasury decided not to hand out the $700 billion that way.
And no lawmaker asked white collar workers or executives who got billions in bonuses based on false profits to return them.
But those Toyota Republicans want middle class, blue collar workers who don’t get year end bonuses, who don’t celebrate with five-figure dinners, to take wage cuts. They want autoworker pensioners to lose the monthly benefits they earned with a lifetime of labor.
And at no time did those Toyota Republicans suggest that they should cut their own salary or top-notch, government-paid health benefits or pensions. Like the reckless speculators on Wall Street, Congress bears responsibility for the crisis condition of the American economy because it deregulated financial markets.
In 2002, during a downturn in Japan, the House of Councillors reduced the pay of Diet lawmakers by 10 percent, and ended the transportation allowance, portrait-painting and pension given senior lawmakers.
If the Toyota Republicans believe the Japanese way of pay is so great for autoworkers, they should first impose it on themselves.

Bleepin Union Haters next to bite the dust

Many thanks to Indiana's U.S. Senators for voting to loan the auto companies their 14 billion bucks to get them through this depression. Both Senator Lugar and Senator Bayh voted the American way.

The Union Haters who voted for their foreign car companies which are located in "right to work for less states" are the ones we need to concentrate on kicking out in the next election. They vote for the race to the bottom for American workers, hate the unions (except for their own) and don't know what it means to be a patriotic American.

Here are their bleepin names:

Allard, Colo.; Barrasso, Wyo.; Bennett, Utah; Bunning, Ky.; Burr, N.C.; Chambliss, Ga.; Coburn, Okla.; Cochran, Miss.; Coleman, Minn.; Corker, Tenn.; Crapo, Idaho; DeMint, S.C.; Ensign, Nev.; Enzi, Wyo.; Grassley, Iowa; Gregg, N.H.; Hatch, Utah; Hutchison, Texas; Inhofe, Okla.; Isakson, Ga.; Kyl, Ariz.; Martinez, Fla.; McCain, Ariz.; McConnell, Ky.; Murkowski, Alaska; Roberts, Kan.; Sessions, Ala.; Shelby, Ala.; Thune, S.D.; Vitter, La.; Wicker, Miss.

Notice that Mr. all American "McCain" is in that group.

The Loan would have provided some security for the workers and retirees. But, since voting against the loan would cause human misery, the right wingers naturally voted against it.

Auto Company Scoundrels

Today, the jackass CEO’s from the big three auto makers will testify before congress and present their plans for getting their companies up and running.

It will be interesting to see how they travel to Washington this morning. The last time they testified, they all three took separate private corporate jets, then requested a 25 billion dollar loan.

What is it about some CEO’s of big corporations that make them so elitist? What makes them think they’re better than everyone else?

Such egos they have. They need to come down to earth. Power. Power sure does change people. A down to earth person who is otherwise normal, when given too much power, has to be very careful not to give in to falling prey to the instinct to think they’re better than everybody else.
At the same time, I sure have to give credit to these companies for negotiating fare contracts with the UAW. They pay living wages and provide good benefits which is more than I can say to many other auto companies that exploit workers.

The economy and the failure of the country to make it easier for workers to organize into unions is what has created this catastrophe.

The UAW has sure done what any good union would do to make these companies profitable, but just like in years past, the companies run themselves into the ground by not having vision.

The UAW has already negotiated the concessions necessary. Now it’s up to the auto companies.
Every CEO in America should pay very close attention to the behavior of these auto company CEO’s and learn from their mistakes.

Congress must grant the loan to prevent the Midwest from going down the tubes. At the same time, take away the extravagant salaries of these scoundrel CEO’s along with their golden parachutes and benefits.

The workers and retirees must not be the fall guys. They have forgone wages over the years to earn their pensions.

If the auto companies go bankrupt, the workers and retirees will lose those decent pensions and will lose their medical insurance. Maybe that’s what the conservatives in Washington really want. For the unions to disappear. After all, the auto companies that are doing well don't allow their workers to organize themselves, or at least fight them tooth and nail.

There ought to be a law against so called Right-to-Work-for-less states, or better yet, pass the Employee Free Choice Act. If this legislation could be passed and signed into law, then workers who want a union, could have one.

What Conservatives Are Doing

Republicans, after handing billions of dollars to the Wall Street crooks, want the big three auto companies to go belly up.

They want to compare the workers in Right to Work states that have no union organization to those states who have organized workers.

It's the race to the bottom.

Since workers without a union have to pay most or all of their Medical Insurance, and have no pensions, these Republicans are saying that the members of the United Auto Workers should be in the same boat in order to become competitive.

What we really need is the Employee Free Choice Act, so those workers in southern states can bargain collectively for better wages, working conditions, and benefits.

If the "big three" are forced into bankruptcy, millions of workers will lose their jobs. Foundry workers, rubber workers, Steelworkers and others. The retirees will lose part of their pensions and will lose their medical insurance.

Those calling for this to happen are getting their wages paid by us, their pensions paid by us, their medical insurance paid by us.

The Right to Work (for less) people need to stop dividing workers.

Never call me a "conservative"

Let us all pray for our President Elect, Barack Obama.
Let us pray as well that President Bush will leave office without creating more damage to our country in the time he has left.
Now we all know what "conservatism" really means and I for one, want no part of it.
Can you imagine someone calling you a "conservative"? What a slap in the face that would be.